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Displaced IT Workers Being Silenced
dcblogs writes A major problem with the H-1B debate is the absence of displaced IT workers in news media accounts. Much of the reporting is one-sided — and there's a reason for this. An IT worker who is fired because he or she has been replaced by a foreign, visa-holding employee of an offshore outsourcing firm will sign a severance agreement. This severance agreement will likely include a non-disparagement clause that will make the fired worker extremely cautious about what they say on Facebook, let alone to the media. On-the-record interviews with displaced workers are difficult to get. While a restrictive severance package may be one handcuff, some are simply fearful of jeopardizing future job prospects by talking to reporters. Now silenced, displaced IT workers become invisible and easy to ignore. This situation has a major impact on how the news media covers the H-1B issue and offshore outsourcing issues generally.
I have been displaced on more than one occasion. Atos laid me off so they could hire a cheaper H1B worker. (Not a loss as they are a sweat shop)
Atos has several NO-Outsource government contracts and before my layoff they were discussing outsourcing them and putting one American to answer the phone so the government did not know it was outsourced.
There was a company that was backed by the airlines where the CIO was Indian and the whole IT group was H1B's. I was the only white guy there and I was laid off from them officially for "Not meeting there expectations" and was replaced by an H1B worker.
HP had several H1B workers working 80+ hour weeks and only reporting 40 hours. On the promise that they would "Make it up to them." They replaced me because I was saying it was illegal to do, yep they brought in another H1B to replace me.
Between H1B's and outsourcing work to India, IT has been a crappy field but I still make money at it.
And, well, fuck the non-disparagement agreement. It's not disparagement to post factual information.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Actually, depending on the terms of the dismissal (particularly how much notice is given), severance pay is not a benefit in the US, but required by law - http://www.doleta.gov/programs... In many of these cases, however, they're basically offering you that 3months+ of pay to be quiet (among other things). Even "I worked for a tech company that I'll not name, and was laid off when they hired foreign workers" may be in violation of the terms, especially when you start to ponder the strength of their legal team vs. yours.
Absolutely false. I've used several that were honest and straight up.
Depending on the language in the contract, posting factual information could very well violate these agreements. I believe you're thinking about libel or slander (i.e. false statements). Disparagement, however, doesn't have to be false. It merely has to cast the benefited party in a negative light. This can be a huge grey area and given the insane cost of defending a lawsuit, I understand why people subject to these provisions might be very reluctant to speak.
I recently became friends with an Iranian woman and her family that are trying very hard to emigrate to the United States. She is currently in the process of trying to get hired and sponsored by one of these job shops because she has practically no other choice for employment here. Everyone in her family is very intelligent and hard working and my friend herself has masters degrees in computer science and business administration. She's an atheist, however, and she can't go back to Iran without a risk of being "outed" and imprisoned or executed.
Previously when I thought of "H1-B" I thought of exactly what you described. Young people with nothing to lose dorming up and working for peanuts because it's the easy way out, driving down wages in what should be a very competitive highly skilled job sector. I'm glad I met someone who showed me the other side of the coin. I consider myself a liberal and a humanist and I'm ashamed at myself for having held such a xenophobic view and expressing frustration with the people who are coming here seeking H1-B and similar visa work. Truly the only entities that deserve any derision for the wage depression and unfair labor practices are the sponsoring companies who pay such paltry wages and the tech companies that create demand for cheap foreign labor.
This. Every time I hear "we can't find enough employees" I substitute "... at the lowball pricepoints we're willing to give out". It strikes me as odd that the laws of supply and demand somehow are allowed to disappear when it comes to people/employees. If demand is so high, wages should be pushed up. They're not. Over a course of years, the tools for people to fight a more fair fight have been peeled away. As a kid I still remember the PATCO strike. Government intervention against workers collective bargaining, and then all the way to Wisconsin and governmor Walker. Suppliers can't be squeezed. Profits should never be squeezed. Lets squeeze the employees.
That and the fact that employee wages are inputs to the system. Even Henry Ford, hard right capitalist, realized you can't squeeze wages so much that people can't afford things.
Posting as anonymous for obvious reasons.
I managed a team of developers at a shrink wrap software shop for ~3 years. It was actually a really solid place to work from a cultural and technical point of view. Unfortunately, the CEO was a bit of a hot-head and injected mass drama every time he came out of his office.
I had a quarterly check in with him, and give him an accurate description of my active projects and my thoughts on the direction he wanted to move in. I expressed my concern about the quality of some of the 10+ year old code that was at the core of the features he wanted to expand on. Turns out that negative feedback was not what he was looking for.
Next thing I know the CIO is stopping by asking me what it is that I actually do day to day. Then my lead architect mentioned that the CEO stopped by and talked about taking a "more active role" in the team.
Not long after that, I was given marching orders and a severance package. The severance was predicated by the signature of a pair of contracts covering confidentiality and behaviors.
About a month and a half into my severance, I get an irate call from the HR director claiming I've violated my severance agreement and that they will be seeking recomp.
I hired a lawyer, talked it out with him. Either we ignore them and hope they don't come after me, we call their bluff and threaten a counter suit, or we pay them off and nullify the contract. At this point I was tempted, ooh so tempted, to just say, "OK". Because with no contract, there is no confidentiality agreement, no non-disparagement agreement, no non-compete agreement.
As soon as my lawyer pointed out that if the employer broke the contract that they wouldn't have standing to come after me for the other aspects of the contract, they backed off and paid out the rest of my severance.
It's nice to get the money that was owed to me, but the annoyance of the contracts sucks, and I will definitely avoid any such contracts in the future.
In the end though, I will never put a review of that company on Glassdoor. I do not talk about my separation with my friends from the company. And the details of my severance package will never be shared. Because fsk are lawyers expensive.